InDesign running slow. Spinning ball constantly appearing.

[scottmosher]

Ok, I'm having CONSTANT slow drag with InDesign. The spinning beach ball appears while I"m doing almost ANYTHING, even after quitting/re-starting the program, and even re-starting the OS. I'm running High Sierra on Mac, with 40GB of memory, so that shouldn't be the issue, but almost anything I'm doing, I'm getting major lag. Any ideas? This is really ridiculous. Thanks!

[williamm97875483]

I don't know what/where this is:

Go to Locations:

~/Library/Caches

~/Library/Preferences

Delete or rename Adobe InDesign and com.adobe.indesign

Launch InDesign from the CC

Also, you mention "working offline." How do I do this? Ready to try anything. Going on 20 billable hours lost thanks to this "upgrade."

Also, how do I turn off those obnoxious pop-ups? I don't need adware while I'm working.

[Alicia Decaro]

I would have to turn off Wifi and remove any network connections to my machine. That would help, but would cause a problem if you want to search online while working. I also found that saving as .imdl files would help with the delay, but they I was having issues with version control. This issue was very frustrating and I lost many billable hours due to it. Good luck, I hope they find an answer for you soon!

[Srishti Bali]

Hi William,

Alicia's issue is completely different. So right now we don't need to remove network connections in your case.

Below mentioned are Folder locations for InDesign preferences.

williamm97875483  wrote

Go to Locations:

~/Library/Caches

~/Library/Preferences

Delete or rename Adobe InDesign and com.adobe.indesign

Launch InDesign from the CC

Please open Finder

On Top menu Please click Go > "Go to Folder"

Then It will open a fillable Pop-Up to write the location

Type these locations one by one

~/Library/Caches

~/Library/Preferences

Delete or rename Adobe InDesign and com.adobe.indesign

Launch InDesign from the CC.

Regards,

Srishti

[Seb29]

I found the problem! (for me anyway). I had a WD MyCloud external drive that was perhaps trying to backup data in the background (a normal task). I unplugged the drive and no more InDesign frequent spinning wheel. I used to get the spinning wheel every 5-10 seconds  and it lasted for about 10 seconds. That's no way to work!

Anyway, I hope Adobe finds a way to fix this ASAP. No issues in any of my other apps, or so I think so far.

@srishtib8795206

[Laubender]

Hi Seb29 ,

don't know if Adobe developers can fix the issues you have with a third-party product, your WD MyCloud external drive.

What's your version of InDesign and operating system? Maybe there is a setting with WD MyCloud that should be changed so that it will not interrupt the running of InDesign?

Regards,
Uwe

[scotts43428854]

Thanks for posting your solution of removing your backup drive. InDesign was unusable for me and I was getting no where with the other suggestions. When I read your post I turned of the continuous backup software and the slowness issues were resolved. I am using Synology Drive for continuous backup. Just sharing in case someone else is in the same situation. I made no changes to InDesign - just temporarily disabled the backup and the slowness issues went away. I'll see if I can exclude the InDesign temp files from the backup - that should be a resonable long term solution.

[rpr]

This is what I mean by it appears to be an adobe cloud issue. indesign doesn't want to work on anything running anything cloud based. Particularly questionable because it should have 0 network  requirements to save locally and place images and texyt from local folders. It doesn't seem very compatible with macs using icloud , a feature i think everyone can accept mac users will want to be using. Also seems fair to say at this stage adobe should be programming for mac users since it's one of two main options most people use as an operating system. It hates competing with any other cloud service but worst of all it doesn't even seem to like it's own cloud service very much. I definitely agree, That is no way to work!

[AlessandraKal]

Cloud services has not incompatibility with InDesign, I have google Drive, DropBox, Box, Icloud, creative cloud and only stopping Time Machine Backup I’ve find a solution. Stop all backup when you are in Indesign and it work normally 🤷🏻‍:female_sign:

(PII removed by moderator)

[rpr]

Im glad you have a solution that works for you. But one solution does not make it The solution and many if us have tried that route already. I have not used time machine for some time because it can draw too much cpu while using intensive programs. I also do not use Dropbox desktop integration for the same reason, I find it does contribute to a noticeable  performance issue.  Hanging ball of death and crashes for me often seem associated with extremely high cpu and network cloud tasks for cc and icloud in activity monitor. So it suggests those cloud services as high possible issues the program is struggling against. Doesn't matter if indesign is the only program open either. 

I use plenty of programs that are much more demanding than indesign and work fine. Even within Adobe, premiere and after effects do not crash or hang nearly as often as indesign. But those programs have more professional alternatives than indesign so maybe they are incentivized differently in their development and debugging.  For many, poor performance and unreliability have been indesign's "normal" for far too long. 

[RaCreate]

I agree completely. I've been using this software since v 1.0. I've NEVER had so many issues as I have the past 12 months. Indesign is simply awful. It sometimes doesn't start at all. And I have to uninstall and reinstall. Then I set up all my preferences (for the 50th time, no exaggeration). Then it's fine, then for no obvious reason it'll beach ball and run slow again. My mac is very well maintained, I clean the system files regularly. But I am having so many technical issues with this software it's infuriating. I'm paying a lot of money per month for this software, and feel so frustrated by the total lack of support. I spend hours of un-billable time searching for solutions. It's just not good enough.

[Derek Cross]

It would help if you could indicate your (exact) version of InDesign and OS and more detail of your issue(s).

Also how much RAM do you have?

[Nicholas Petropoulos]

RaCreate. Having recently upgraded to MacOS Catalina, I too had massive LAG and SLOW reaction times with Adobe CC, in particular InDesign. After experimenting with various ideas, I narrowed the culprit to the 5K LG Ultra Fine monitor display seetings.  If you change the colour PREFS from LG UltraFine to Apple RGB in the display settings, Adobe CC works brilliant. Seems Adobe has bypassed the code to LG UltraFine Display for MAC OS Catalina. Hope this helps. Pass this on please.

Ps. Explains why Mohave wasn't working well either. All good now though. The system is flying.

[CeceliaC]

Thanks for this - I just changed the profile on my 5k iMac to Apple RGB from a custom profile and InDesign is much faster. (I'm running Mojave 10.14.6).

[Elisha5CE2]

THIS WORKED! This is the solution to the spinning wheel and lagging when trying to design in indesign

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

I just ran through this entire thread and there are a couple of questions that I din't see mentioned. If I missed these, I apologize.

Are you using a custom preflight that is constantly checking your documents in the background? I've found that when working with layouts that have lots of large images and transparency, Preflight can slow things down to a crawl (including the spinning wheel of death on a Mac). Try turning off Preflight and see if everything speeds up dramatically.

Another possibile culprit, are you working in documents with lots of high-res images and complex vector files with your Display Performance set to High Quality Display. Every change you make can slow performance down to the point that you can't work. Try Typical View and see if Performance picks up.

[Nicholas Petropoulos]

Jeff. Having recently upgraded to MacOS Catalina, I too had massive LAG and SLOW reaction times with Adobe CC, in particular InDesign. After experimenting with various ideas, I narrowed the culprit to the 5K LG Ultra Fine monitor display seetings.  If you change the colour PREFS from LG UltraFine to Apple RGB in the display settings, Adobe CC works brilliant. Seems Adobe has bypassed the code to LG UltraFine Display for MAC OS Catalina. Hope this helps. Pass this on please.

Ps. Explains why Mohave wasn't working well either. All good now though. The system is flying.

[Brad Kumar]

I know this is a reach guys, but just checking… are all of you using Suitcase Fusion as your font manager? I have the same problem, and when I look at my Activity Monitor, the one item that comes to the top of my CPU intensive list is FMCore (which is the Suitcase daemon) at the exact same time I get the spinning beach ball in Indesign (it can hog from 20% to 90% of the CPU for a few seconds). Can anyone else confirm?

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

I use Suitcase and have never had problem with it slowing anything down.

As far as I know, the only time Suitcase should have major activity is when you open an InDesign file and the fonts are closed.

Hmm! Before you do anything, check out the following Suitcase Help link: Resolving problems You could have some corrupted fonts, duplicates or conflicts. These could be driving Suitcase crazy, literally.

Just a guess.

[Jeff_Extensis]

If you are still having issues with one of our Extensis products, please contact one of our Support Agents using the link below:

https://help.extensis.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

Hi,

I was not the one having the issue. If you reread my post, I said, I use Suitcase and have never had problem with it slowing anything down."

I just recommended that Brad visit Suitcase help.

[Jeff_Extensis]

Sorry. Clicked the wrong reply button. : )

[Brad Kumar · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeff. I actually did open a ticket with Extensis and a helpful person suggested I temporarily turn off FMCore to see if the problem persisted. Well, I didn't actually turn off the Type Core in preferences, but rather, I turned off the "Enable Document Tracking" option and after that I noticed a SIGNIFICANT improvement to my interruptions… the spinning beach was reduced by I would estimate 80%, so I'm quite happy with the result. Hope this helps some others on this thread. Thanks!

[bungalowindustries]

Wow - knockout!  Brand new 2018 MacBook Pro 15", clean install CC2019 ... appalling InDesign performance - constant beach balls (and have purchased Affinity products to migrate over as it's been such a waste of time & money battling with this)... had already disabled lots of things in ID prefs, including font previews... but now have disabled Document Tracking in Suitcase prefs, and it's given a *significant* improvement to ID.  Adobe + Extensis - please get your heads together on this, there's clearly a problem and you'll lose customers who've been loyal for years. £50 per month for this CC subscription sticks in your throat when your software hangs a new computer.

[BobLevine]

Wow is right. While you may certainly have a beef with Extensis, aiming this at Adobe is unfair. And while Affinity is doing a nice job of developing software if you think they have a viable replacement for InDesign you're sadly mistaken. That doesn't even touch on the fact that there's no plugin for auto-activating fonts.

Perhaps in a couple of years, it will be ready for prime time; but now? Not a chance.

[bungalowindustries]

Scratch that. Seemed to work for the doc open at the time. Just opened another.... 5 mins of beachball for a 1-page A4 with 5 image links.